"PICKING" four needle double knitting video, time indexed transcript

 This is a time-indexed transcript of TECHknitting’s “PICKING” technique for FOUR NEEDLE DOUBLE KNITTING. 

Video link, You Tube video of the picking technique (8 minutes)

Post link, link to TECHknitting text post about four-needle double knitting. 

The video is subtitled in English. By going to the “settings” (gear) button of the You-tube, then selecting closed caption option, you can see the English subtitles, or choose to translate the subtitles into many languages: easier to follow. However, if translating subtitles is unavailable for your language, translate this time-indexed transcript instead.

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0:00

Hi this is TECHknitter here, and I’m showing a trick called “PICKING.” Picking is a trick that you use with four-needle double knitting. This is one in a series of two videos, and the other video shows a trick called “slide-by.” And that’s also for four needle double knitting. Slide-by is for when you have blocks of color, such as those I’m pointing to here. 

0:28. 

But this video shows picking, and that’s what you use when you have a row with frequent color changes when four-needle double knitting. Now, you can see that the four needles in my work are connected to two cable (circular) needles, and that’s where you get the four needles from. 

0:48

As with all double knitting, the back layer of fabric is created by purling it from the back. The opposite of a purl is  knit, so when you look at it from the front, from this side, it is a smooth stockinette fabric. 

1:05

The front layer of fabric is knit in the ordinary way. So, what this means for us, is that the back set of needles, the two that i’m tapping here—the left and the right, back—PURL—those are where the purl stitches are, and you purl with them, and the two front needles, the one’s I’m tapping now, this one, the right, and this one, the left are the ones with which you knit.

1:38

This particular pattern requires that I now knit the two front (green) stitches. So… even though I’m carrying four needles in my hands at all times, there are only two that are the operational needles. 

1:53

And this ort of odd thing I’m doing with the needles is that I’m rotating them around one another. 

2:02 

When the right needle is in the lower position, such as the one I’m tapping now, it is the operational needle. And then, the left needle correspondingly gets rotated back to meet it. So, if I want to knit—which is the thing I have to do ow—I rotate my needles so that right front is lower, and the left front is in the back, or more upright position and…

2:24

I’m going to now knit my two green stitches from this position using only the front needles. So thats…knit, and again... knit. 

2:48

Now my pattern requires that  purl the two back stitches in purple. So, I drop the green and I pick up the purple. Note that the yarn not in use—which is now going to be the green yarn—is simply stranded between the two left needles.

3:11

Here it is, and it’s stranded between the two left needles. I now pick up my purple yarn, I rotate the right back needle into the working position, that being the lower position.

3:27

 The right—no, I’m sorry, the BACK left needle is now in the more upright, or more backwards (behind) position, and I now purl my two purple stitches with the back needles. Notice that I’m holding the right working tip separated: I can actually get a finger in there, that’s how separated they are!

3:51

And, that separation keeps them out of each other’s way. So, that way only the operational needles are really in a position to pick up the working yarn.

4:03

Now, I need to knit two purple stitches, so…I rotate the right front needle into the lower position, and the left front needle into the higher, more upright position, and I now knit these two stitches holding all four needles, but only two (are) operational.

4:29

I’ll do that one more time: rotate now the back needle into the lower position, the left back needle into the more upright or higher position and I proceed to purl two stitches, again: with the needle tips separated.

4:55

That’s purl, and purl. Again, the yarn not-in-use is simply stranded between the two left needles until I need it again, so when I need the purple, I’ll simply pick it up and work. 

5:10

Now, you may asky why I’m not holding the yarns in the two fisted position like this, as I would for color knitting, and the answer is, I’m just not that talented. It’s not possible for me to consistently purl in the English position. For me, it’s quicker to pick up and drop the two colored yarns. 

5:34 

But, of course, your hands may be more talented and you may be able to work the picking trick with the two-fisted yarn approach. 

5:44

I want to show you one last thing, and that is, what happens when your tension goes off. This stitch here, this back green stitch, is uh, a little loose, there’s a little extra slack in it, and so I’m going to show you how to get rid of that. 

6:04

It’s really very simple: you pull the slack out, by simply yankng on the yarn as it travels from needle to needle, and I’m pulling out that green yarn, just pulling it up, pulling it up from needle to needle and now it’s all on the last stitch, so simply pulling on the green working yarn has now gotten rid of that slack.

6:36

As you go up the learning curve, the tension really does become more automatic, but when you first start, there is a lot of manual yarn adjustment that you will find yourself doing. There’s perhaps a little extra slack in that purple also, so again; it isn’t very hard to get it up out of the way, a few tugs every few stitches will control that.

7:05

Truthfully, I don’t really have a problem usually with the tension as you can see, but (because) I’m chattering and not really looking at the work has caused these tension problems. Certainly, when I began, and was going up the learning curve, I had a lot more tension problems, and manual yarn adjustment was very common for me to have to do—pretty much every few stitches, but…you DO go up the learning curve

7:31

Last thing is, that you ARE working very very close to the needle tips and yes, indeed! These stitches just want to slide off, it’s just like sock yitting—sorry, sock KNITTING when you first started it, and it just requires you to kind of concentrate there, and not allow the stitches to slide off. So, that was picking, and thank you! for watching. 

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This is the second of two videos about four-needle double knitting. The first in the series is called "slide-by," there is a time-indexed translation for that video also. 

"SLIDE-BY" four-needle double knitting video, time-indexed transcript

This is a time-indexed transcript of TECHknitting’s “SLIDE-BY” technique for FOUR NEEDLE DOUBLE KNITTING. 

Video link, You Tube video of SLIDE-BY technique (6 minutes)

Post link, link to TECHknitting text post about four-needle double knitting. 

The video is subtitled in English. By going to the “settings” (gear) button of the You-tube, then selecting closed caption option, you can see the English subtitles, or choose to translate the subtitles into many languages: easier to follow. However, if translating subtitles is unavailable for your language, translate this time-indexed transcript instead.

* * *

0:00 

Hi, this is TECHknitter here and I’m showing a trick for FOUR NEEDLE DOUBLE KNITTING. And, this particular trick is called “slide by.” This is the first of a series of two videos. The second video shows a trick called “picking.” 

0:18 

Slide-by, which is this video here is a trick for four-needle— you see there are four needles here—four needle double knitting when you’re making blocks of color such as what I’m making here . You can see that there are six stitches, and six stitches, and so on and so forth. And that makes these blocks of color. 

0:41 The other video about “picking” is what you use when you have frequent color changes, so not blocks of color, but frequent color changes, such as this row which is two, two, two, two, two, or even in this row here which is where you have some rows which are one, one, one, one, one, one. And, that is the different video which is called “picking.”

1:06 

This one here is called “slide by,” and let me break down for you what I am doing here. 

Again, I said this is four-needle double knitting, and so this trick involves making a double knitting fabric using four needle tips, which are attatched to two cable needles. 

1:24

For blocks of color, this is by far the fastest double knitting technique, and it results in the best tension because stitches that are next to one another in the FABRIC are actually next to one another AS YOU CREATE them. If you know about “regular (classic) double knitting, you realize that is not the case with regular double knitting.

1:45 

So, this is an advantage here. 

Now, the back needles hold the purl stitches in this four needle double knitting trick. And, that’s always how you create the back fabric of a double knitting, these stitches are purled from the back. Purled from the back means knit on the front, so it’s a smooth stockinette fabric on this (back) side. 

2:07 

The front fabric is knit from the front, so it is stockinette, as are all fabrics which are knit from the front.

Now, the slide-by technique relies on the fact that when you have cables, the cable part—if you park your stitches on the cables, the work will be very flexible. 

2:28 

So you can see that my next part here in the pattern is to knit these six stitches, and because I’m knitting, I’m not purling, so I’m SLIDING my back needles out the work. As I said, when the work is all on the cables, when the back work is all (slid to) the cables, you can see that the work is very flexible, so it’s going to be very easy for me to simply knit, as if this was ordinary every-day knitted fabric. 

3:00 

I’m just going to knit these six stitches as a (color) block in front. The only trick here is, you do have to pull up a little to bridge the gap where the yarn is going from this back stitch to this front stitch, from this back stitch to this front stitch. So, you have to pull up a little bit, and after you’ve done this trick for a while, the tension part becomes automatic. 

3:25 

So, now I’ve finished with the six front stitches, so now, I—my next step is to purl these six purple stitches in the back, so I’m pulling now the front needles out of the work, and setting the back needles into position, so that the (back) yarn is no longer on the cable, but is in fact on the tips.

3:56 

And again, with the front stitches on the cable here, the work is very flexible, and it’s super easy to just go ahead and purl as if it were ordinary fabric, to purl these last six, these back—I should say these back six stitches. 

4:14 

So, there’s my purple. Now I’m on the front again. 

Now, you know, as you can imagine, dragging needles in and out of the work gets kind of old, so, once you get—once you’ve gone up the learning curve a little bit, you really don’t have to yank the needles all the way out. 

4:30 

Just kind of pull them up to give yourself some flexibility is good, but you don’t have to actually pull them all the way out, as I'll demonstrate now.

4:43 

So here is the purple. so it’s um, one, two, three, four, five, six, and because the needles are pulled up, either somewhat up or all the way up, the back uh—the needle not in use, in this particular case, the back one—the stitches can’t fall off of it. The needles, being pulled up, act as stitch holders.

5:15 

One last thing I want to leave you with is that the yarn not in use always strands between the two green—I’m sorry, it always strands between the two LEFT needles.

5:28 

So, this green yarn—the one that was out of use, but now is in use—had been left stranded, and now I simply go back to where it was dropped off, and off I go with my slide-by technique. 

5:47 

Thank you very much for watching, and, that’s all there is to it.

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This is the first of two videos about four-needle double knitting. The second in the series is called "picking," there is a time-indexed translation for that video also.